66 Time April 25/May 2, 2022
“regenerative agriculture,” an umbrella term for
practices that help build healthy soils, improve
water quality, and restore local biodiversity. The
idea is that healthier plants will produce greater
yields of higher-quality crops, so more money
flows to farmers—who pay significantly higher
rent on organic farmland—and to investors back-
ing Farmland LP’s fund. “Our mission is to dem-
onstrate that regeneratively managed farmland is
more profitable than commodity farmland,” Wich-
ner tells TIME.
Federal agencies and universities are simi-
larly investing in the shift. In February, the USDA
launched a $1 billion “climate-smart commodities”
initiative to help food producers and forest owners
adopt new practices and track carbon emissions.
Farmland LP is far from the only private firm
betting on America’s fields and pastures. Despite
the financial precariousness farmers face, land it-
self is an increasingly attractive asset. Prominent
billionaires like Bill Gates and Ted Turner are
among the largest owners of U.S. farmland. Institu-
tional investors, wealth advisory firms, and individ-
uals are claiming shares of arable land. Unlike the
U.S. stock market and housing sector, agricultural
land has consistently delivered positive annual re-
turns over the past few decades through rent from
farmers, rising land values, and federal subsidies.
Even so, the growing number of investor-
farmers is raising concerns about who gets to par-
ticipate in the agricultural sector, and how. Wealth-
ier enterprises can stomach rising land values,
higher rents, and market forces that favor large-
scale production. But other would-be farmers are
struggling to gain a foothold. That includes young
farmers—many of whom are people of color—eager
to produce food sustainably to serve their commu-
nities, says Holly Rippon-Butler, land campaign
director for the National Young Farmers Coalition.
Such barriers are perpetuating long-standing
disparities in U.S. farming, she says. More than 95%
of the nation’s 3.4 million agricultural producers
identify as white, according to 2017 USDA Census
data. Explicit federal policies and practices over
centuries barred anyone but white men from own-
ing land, the consequences of which are clear in the
current demographics. Black farmers in particular
still face discrimination when applying for loans
and accessing land, though social impact startups
like the Black Farmer Fund are working to remove
those barriers.
“We need to start addressing that inequity if
we’re going to have a viable future for agriculture
in this country,” Rippon-Butler says.
The investment boom is also accelerating the
cultural shift in farming communities away from
hands-on, small-scale producers toward digitally
managed farm systems with faraway landlords,the fertile fields just east of Brentwood, near the
city of Stockton. The fund is among a handful of
U.S.-based firms, including Iroquois Valley, Dirt
Capital Partners, and Grasslands LLC, that are
using their financial and farming expertise to re-
make the American agricultural landscape. All told,
Farmland LP owns and manages 15,000 acres in
Northern California, Washington State, and Ore-
gon, with total assets valued at nearly $200 million.John Dwelley, a fourth-generation farmer, grew
up selling sweet corn and stone fruit from his fami-
ly’s tin-roof produce stand on the side of a dusty two-
lane highway. Expanding to Farmland LP’s nearby
terrain is part of a larger plan to keep the family leg-
acy going, he says, even as Brentwood transforms
from an agricultural hub to a suburban boomtown.
“For my sake, I hope to be farming until I’m a
ripe old age,” says the 36-year-old, “so I want to
make sure that we’re setting ourselves up for long-
term success.” Today the family leases hundreds of
acres from Farmland LP on top of
the other acreage it owns or leases.
Farmland LP, based near San Fran-
cisco, says it is working to make
more organic acreage available at
a time when land for farming and
ranching is vanishing nationwide
and rising temperatures threaten
to disrupt the world’s food supply.
Tens of millions of acres of
farmland have given way to ware-
houses, big-box stores, and sprawl-
ing subdivisions in the past three
decades. Small farmers and ranch-
ers—facing mounting debt, rising
property taxes, and unstable com-
modity prices—are losing or leaving their property.
With fewer young people following in their par-
ents’ footsteps, older generations are retiring and
selling family fields. The nation lost nearly 120,000
farms between 2011 and 2021, according to data
from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
At the same time, many remaining farms are
consolidating into large industrial operations
growing a single commodity crop like soy or corn,
often using chemical-heavy and water-intensive
methods. In some states, excessive fertilizer use
is polluting drinking water and contributing to
toxic algal blooms, while the large-scale spraying
of pesticides has stripped away habitats for bees
and butterflies. Overworked soil and thirsty crops
are especially vulnerable to drought, heavy rainfall,
and other events made worse by climate change.
Farmland LP aims to both preserve existing
farms and spare them from industrial monocrop-
ping, says Craig Wichner, the firm’s founder and
managing partner. Instead, the fund promotes‘I want to makesure that we’resettingourselves upfor long-termsuccess.’
—JOHN DWELLEY,
FOURTH-GENERATION FARMER
AND FARMLAND LP CLIENT